DISINFO: The Ukrainian army kills its own people in Donbas
SUMMARY
They [Ukrainian army] methodically shoot people on the front line. For two months I have been traveling along the front line, in villages, including in absolutely Ukrainian villages, and everywhere people say that they [Ukrainian soldiers] are shooting at us, they are killing us. Since I am here, several people were shot.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative claiming that Ukrainian army kills civilians in Donbas and to portray events in Donbas as a civil war.
In 2020, according to the Human Rights Ombudsman of Ukraine, 23 civilians died, most of them before the cease-fire agreement entered into force on July 27. Overall, 3,300 civilians died due to the conflict over the last seven years, the UN reports. The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission reported in its daily report on 6 April 2021 a boy died in non-government-controlled Oleksandrivske due to blast trauma and multiple shrapnel wounds. Also, it recorded one civilian casualty in a government-controlled area (500 m from the contact line). A man was wounded in a leg.
Ukraine and OSCE detect more cases of ceasefire violation. This led to increased casualties in the Ukrainian army.
The war in Eastern Ukraine is not a civil conflict, but an act of aggression by the Russian armed forces, that has been ongoing since February 2014. The European Union stated in July 2014 that "arms and fighters continue flowing into Ukraine from the Russian Federation". At the NATO Summit in Wales in September 2014, NATO leaders condemned in the strongest terms Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and demanded that Russia stop and withdraw its forces from Ukraine and from the country’s border.
See similar disinformation cases in our database: Ukrainian army killing the people in Donbas, a provocation by the Ukrainian armed forces was prevented in Donbas, the US prepares Ukrainian army for genocide in Donbas.